Vincenzo Malacarne (1744–1816): a researcher in neurophysiology between anatomophysiology and electrical physiology of the human brain

Abstract

Since his first years at Turin until the last years of his life at Padua, Vincenzo Malacarne devoted most of his time to the examination of the structures and the various parts of which the cerebellum and the human brain are composed. He is rightly considered as one of the first to have correctly described the anatomy of the cerebellum, as well in the field of human anatomy and comparative anatomy. However, his work cannot be reduced to these studies. He worked out a cerebral physiology, with organic and intellectual phenomena in mind, established on an anatomopsychic parallelism. This parallelism is itself founded on a rational and mathematical criterion: the number of lamellae contained in the cerebellum. A letter written by him in 1792 and addressed to Abbot Denina was recently found by the present author in November 2005 at the Academy of Sciences of Turin. Malacarne exposed his project of studying the animal electricity put forward by Galvani within the cerebral organ. May it be that Malacarne had in mind the physiology of his time while trying to record an electric activity within the brain? To cite this article: C. Cherici, C. R. Biologies 329 (2006).